[I should say right ahead that I’m not picking on them
(since I disagreed before), but when many good ideas come across from Hutch Carpenter
and the Spigit folks, sometimes I just have to disagree.]

The article Maslow’s Hierarchy of Enterprise 2.0 ROI on the Spigit blog from last week proposed a framework for a pyramidal hierarchy of needs
aimed specifically at ROI of Enterprise 2.0. They are correct in some ways describing
a pyramid of levels starting at the base with tangible needs and moving up
towards increasingly intangible ones.

I’ve linked to their image here, source Spigit Blog. [I may take this image off
if they ask so but you can generally find it on their blog post]

However, I’m not so sure that it can be so easily applied
here in terms of the levels. For one, Maslow’s theory indicates that humans cannot
focus on the higher levels until the lower levels are satisfied. This would be
nice to conclusively say this of Enterprise 2.0 ROI but I can give examples
where it is very difficult to identify “cost-savings” at the bottom of the pyramid
in a conclusive and replicable way, but easy to identify “employee satisfaction”
somewhere around the middle.

Cost savings is a comparative; you need to determine that it
is most efficient to do things with one or more e2.0 tools than existing or
traditional non-e2.0 processes. The trouble is that this is not systematic
across all e2.0 experiences. It’s not simply a matter of deploying a discussion
forum, for example, to support customers before you start seeing results (even
before you see cost-savings); in fact, there’s no guarantee it will ever become
enough of a social environment where the vendor, partners, other users etc. are
properly supporting the needs of a customer. In comparison, a support workflow,
even if more expensive, has immediate results. Until the social environment
actually does support customers, it is a cost-center.

However, even without knowing cost-savings per Maslow’s
theory, you can use survey instruments to determine employee satisfaction. Qualitative
measures such as “satisfaction” work best by gathering input directly from
people; it’s simply something in their heads that you need to get to. This
means surveys, interviews, and focus groups. However, it does get a metric—which
ROI is—of the level of satisfaction, without ever having to find out if the
social environment creates cost-savings. This is similarly so for “customer
satisfaction,” and I’d argue for “cross-org collaboration” as well.

So, while the idea of relative dependencies and ranking of hard
and soft metrics that indicate some beneficial return, I don’t think this
approach works. The logic has some holes and I wouldn't be able to sell this idea to folks around here.